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Excuse me Zeebu but what did you say about xim/xer or xhey? I will have you know that facts are a racist misogynist way for nazi's to push the patriarchy you fucking cis scum. Jessup sexually identifies as factually fluid.

for the uninformed, you are not making as much of a mockery of trump or saying anything really but you are ridiculing people who were affected by nazism including:
gestapos kicking people to death if they voted wrong party
einsatz
josef mengele
concenration camps which had a combined kill-rate of almost 12 million people

what trump did was not allowing illegal immigrants to get into country or whatever

do you see

Originally Posted by jerome

can we stop and wonder in amazement at the fact that we play a VIDEO GAME that has "generations"???

Hi Qan,
My opinion is that racism is not genetic, nor is sexism, nor is any other ‘ism’. Why? Because the underlying issue at hand is that ‘isms’ are simply sweeping generalizations. And making sweeping generalizations is just intellectual laziness; it is ‘easier’ to make a sweeping generalization than it is to spend additional time and effort to fully explain both sides of an issue. You can get your point across in far fewer words with generalizations. It is like saying some day we will not use statistics (which are just numeric generalizations). Humans are lazy and making generalizations is a very convenient shortcut to making a point. Laziness and convenience has nothing to do with genetics.

No disrespect intended toward you, but I still choose to side with the field of evolutionary biology on this one. I do agree that excessively generalizing based on the perceived traits of people is a kind of intellectual laziness. But I do still stand by the belief that there is a biological component to racism, because that's what the research currently indicates.

However, even if it's not strictly biological, the point remains the same: traits are passed on culturally because they have been at some point beneficial. The edict against premarital sex was preexisting in many cultures that had never encountered one another, because it generally gives costly human offspring (which have a notoriously long gestation time and childhood) a better chance at survival. It's not because everyone's naturally prudish (far from it). But the introduction of contraception made it possible to have a lot of sex with strangers without serious pregnancy risks, so this once almost universal cultural more has fallen by the wayside in just a few decades. It's a trait that's no longer all that beneficial. So cultural traits can appear and disappear in response to new circumstances much faster than biological ones -- you might even call culture a kind of pseudo-genome -- but they still exist only because they've provided some advantage, at some point in time. As did racism.

"You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman."
-Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment

Hi Qan,
I know that genetics play a role, I just hate thinking that we are slaves to it. The most obvious support for your position are the studies they have done looking at separated twins (identical and fraternal twins who were immediately separated at birth and raised totally apart from each other). https://www.livescience.com/47288-tw...-genetics.html

But I like to think of genetics as a predisposition towards a behavior as opposed to dictating behavior. I think this can be seen in other animals too. Are all Pitbull dogs aggressive? Are all Toy Poodles non-aggressive? I agree that these breeds have predispositions toward levels of aggressiveness but we can easily change that behavior with training.

The nature/nurture debate has been going on for a long time but I do not think that anyone has a racism gene. And even if we allow that there might be a biological predisposition for such behavior, it sounds like a perfect excuse for humans to behave badly.

As humans we have control over our behaviors, this consciousness and realization is what allows human to sit upon the top of all other animals (and food chain). As each generation passes the human race is probably moving further way from our instinctual roots but frankly the current generation seems to be going in the wrong direction. If anything I think I am seeing this generation make even more sweeping generalizations towards others than my generation did.
Eph

A rational person can easily reach a racist mindset, since rationality describes logical decision-making within the given constraints. Therefore if you believe the constraints exist (whether they do, they're not the only constraints, or do not) then you can be quite an intelligent racist. It's only by questioning those beliefs/constraints that you can reach a higher understanding.

Trump supporters are on a low level of understanding. Dems are slightly higher. Yet thought is not bounded by two poles, and there is a higher understanding still.

Trump, Hillary. Racist, xim/xer. Mexican, American. Nazi, Antifa. Christian, Muslim. None of these terms describe reality fully. They form an individualized box where the definitions suit your world view according to the way that you, a person among 7 billion, have chosen to interpret it. The choice need not be conscious, but the path towards higher understanding is always chosen and never stumbled upon.

If you draw a small box with an intricate pattern, it is still a small box. If you draw a large box the pattern takes much longer, but the results are always more impressive, more inclusive, and the artist's skills, always, are much more developed.

No disrespect intended toward you, but I still choose to side with the field of evolutionary biology on this one. I do agree that excessively generalizing based on the perceived traits of people is a kind of intellectual laziness. But I do still stand by the belief that there is a biological component to racism, because that's what the research currently indicates.

lil bit of this, lil bit of that

I don't have some exact figure here but i'm assuming like 99.9% of all animals have a genetic predisposition to fear/dislike "different" animals - the evolutionary equivalent of "playing it safe" to protect that animal from encountering a potential predator

But then with humans you throw in sentience and the shit gets complicated. People can rationalize and feed a racist belief because it confirms their unconscious initial aversion to seeing a "different" animal, but everyone sort of defines "different" differently, and everyone learns and experiences different information and environments.

So cultural traits can appear and disappear in response to new circumstances much faster than biological ones -- you might even call culture a kind of pseudo-genome -- but they still exist only because they've provided some advantage, at some point in time. As did racism.

I studied alot of primary sources from the Reconstruction era when I took a class on Louisiana & the Civil War, and noticed alot of (white) southerners were super bitter because they're losing their lands and property, their friends are losing lands and property, the economy is in the shitter and everyone's broke. But at the same time, they're seeing black people gain land, gain property, gain political power. Obviously this perception was a vastly incorrect view of what was happening and why it was happening. But to the average, poorly informed post-war southerner, they see white people worse off in general, and black people better off in general, and conclude it's a zero-sum transfer of wealth and power from one skin color to another. Think about that type of resentment festering as a "pseudo-genome", because it was in fact advantageous as hell. Anyone who wanted anything could use racism to get these white southerners to follow and support them. Racism helped get people elected, helped people get rich.

I think about this when I look at the period between 1960-1990. During the 60's, minorities began gaining civil rights on a mass scale, and are finally able to "enter" American culture, and in the following decades you see more and more minority individuals becoming wealthy, becoming famous, etc. You see their cultural influence more and more. At the same time, however, the American population exceeds the number of American jobs available for the first time ever. Corporations, realizing there's more people than jobs, realize they can stop raising wages to entice people, "if you dont like it you can quit, there's dozens of people willing to take this job". So the inflation-adjusted average wage basically freezes around the 70's. But that's not enough, profits need to be higher, so by the 80's these corporations are realizing it's cheaper to simply build factories overseas where they can pay literal pennies to people to do jobs Americans used to do.

So now imagine you're a relatively average white dude living throughout this era. You're not an economist, you're not a historian, you might read the daily news but not much else. During this period, what seems to be happening? You see the economy beginning to stagnate, you see friends and family laid off and your own paycheck ain't getting any bigger. But for thirty years you've been watching TV and listening to the radio and you're seeing more and more minority politicians, minority businessmen, minority celebrities. And then someone like David Duke comes along, points these two facts out, and tells you that minorities are stealing wealth and power from Good, Hard Working White Americans. You don't see that minorities are also suffering economically because the previous generation's racism led to minorities being herded into ghettos, you just see more minorities on TV but you notice you're seeing more and more of them than you did 30 years ago, while outside and around you, your (mainly white) community experiences the impacts of the beginning of late-stage capitalism. Sure enough, that racism pseudo-gene kicks in, and since corporations are making record profits they can spend that money to find ways to blame the state of the economy on anyone but themselves. Previously people in power could just blame "the blacks" or whatever, but you can't do that anymore in a post-Civil Rights America (not openly, anyway), but this time around they played it a little more subtly. Corporations begin a campaign that goes like "sorry guy, we'd pay you more, but unfortunately we had to give all that money to the government, by the way the government uses tax money for welfare, by the way here's a 30-min news segment on how literally every welfare recipient is a crack-addict with a brand-new Cadillac in the yard.", and let the David Dukes of the world take that and run with it. And year after year these corporations shatter new records for profits while telling the rest of us that "sorry, there's just no money in the budget to give you a raise. Actually, we're going to let you go because it's cheaper to pay a child in singapore to work in our factories. And now, here's a 30-minute news segment about thousands of illegal immigrants and how they're all working on farms in California."

So yeah qan, "racism-as-a-pseudo-gene" makes alot of sense because in a way, you see how a small part of society has exploited racism to divert attention away from the fact that they're looting our country blind. It's incredibly advantageous in that sense. At the same time, it's advantageous for the increasingly oppressed proletariat, because they can make themselves feel better by blaming their own economic stress on someone else - black people, immigrants, welfare recipients, pick your poison.

The Phase > what version of ssc are you guys running?
Criminal> idk whatever was on the first google result for "piece of shit spaceship game from 96 free download"

To Others,
As far as USA sucking, apparently people today have virtually no understanding of history or facts. Here are some USA postage stamps from 1943-1944 honoring countries which the USA saved from the Nazis in WW2. If USA sucks so much, what would have happened to these countries if US had not joined in WW2?

You'd think if you wanted to disprove the idea that America sucks you wouldn't have to go almost ~70 years back to find proof, and you'd think the proof might be a little better than "hey! we made some stamps"

I don't even know where to begin on America's bloodstained record. But for starters, let's look at your stamps. Hitler and prominent Nazi theorists based alot of their "race science" on the ideas of Civil-War-era American "racial scientists" who tried to justify slavery by saying black people weren't human and actually were better off as slaves. So even in the most generous interpretation of our history, the reason we had to "save" those countries is because we gave Hitler the intellectual and economic (dont even get me started on Henry Ford and how he helped the Nazis and hated Jews) ammunition to start WW2 in the first place. So don't ask "where would those countries be if America hadn't entered WW2", ask yourself "Would there have even been a powerful Nazi Reich if America hadn't laid the intellectual and economic foundation for their rise to power?"

The Phase > what version of ssc are you guys running?
Criminal> idk whatever was on the first google result for "piece of shit spaceship game from 96 free download"

I liked the stamps I thought they illustrated his point well, compared to yours which had no pictures and just sucked in general.

As for Ford yeah he helped the nazis in some way. That's not America though. That's like trying to blame America for when Elon finally snaps in traffic and builds the AI you need strobe lighs for, but conveniently leaves out the clause that prevents it from wrestling people to the death. That would be on South Africa duh.. lol

I collect stamps, am Moderator of the largest online stamp forum, and am developer and owner of a very large (50,000+ files) philatelic website http://stampsmarter.com. I used stamps because I think that stamps reflect our history and the human condition pretty well. For example, here is a ‘War on Stamps’ music video I made

I've got somewhat of a small collection of stamps. It was left behind by the previous owners of the house. The previous owner was an avid collector and people would send him stamps from around the world. I've been into stamps since discovering the collection - truly is an intriguing method of learning history!

You'd think if you wanted to disprove the idea that America sucks you wouldn't have to go almost ~70 years back to find proof, and you'd think the proof might be a little better than "hey! we made some stamps...

Reading this on this* day is perfect, the quote that will live in infamy. Sure blow off people that died in my generation, who gives a fuck about them...this is all about you and your safe space.
Eph

*This day - 2,403 Americans died and 1,178 were wounded in Peral Harbor on this day. Nice of you to remember them by minimizing their sacrifice for your ass to sit here and talk bullshit on a space forum today.

Reading this on this* day is perfect, the quote that will live in infamy. Sure blow off people that died in my generation, who gives a fuck about them...this is all about you and your safe space.
Eph

*This day - 2,403 Americans died and 1,178 were wounded in Peral Harbor on this day. Nice of you to remember them by minimizing their sacrifice for your ass to sit here and talk bullshit on a space forum today.

Hobo - The internet is really the next generation postal system.

its chilly out so i understand why you're wrapping yourself up so tightly in that flag, but you can fuck off old man

my grandfather served in the 12th armored and after his death we found photographs of some of the holocaust camps that his unit stumbled upon. he was a quiet man, a smart man, didn't feel the need to go around telling everyone how AMERICAN he was and how BRUTAL the war was. he understood the horrors of war, and therefore he didn't adopt some pseudopatriotism shtick and get triggered when people said something critical of america on a specific day.

Truly, a warrior-poet.

"safe spaces", lol, you literally are gnashing your teeth because you read a certain sentence on a particular day

I wish we could meet irl and have this talk without google in front of you, because i'd love to ask you even the most simple shit, like "what's the name of the airfield that was attacked at pearl harbor?" and see how much you actually know without having to search for it on the internet.

edit: oh, and the obvious question here is, when and where did YOU serve?

Last edited by Jerome Scuggs; 12-08-2017 at 01:20 PM.

The Phase > what version of ssc are you guys running?
Criminal> idk whatever was on the first google result for "piece of shit spaceship game from 96 free download"